A critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’: the rise of a meme

TLDR

The concept of Chinese “debt‑trap diplomacy” emerged as a meme in 2017, illustrating how stories can mix truth and falsehood and how negativity bias shapes public perception. The paper seeks to retell stories of China’s involvement in Angola, Djibouti, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela to counter prevailing media narratives. It does so by compiling and analyzing these case stories as evidence against the media’s spin. The meme spread rapidly, amassing nearly two million Google search results within a year and solidifying into a widely accepted narrative, and the paper ends by urging scholars to confront power with truth.

Abstract

In 2017, a meme was born in a think tank in northern India: Chinese 'debt-trap diplomacy'. This meme quickly spread through the media, intelligence circles and Western governments. Within 12 months it generated nearly 2 million search results on Google in 0.52 seconds and was beginning to solidify into a deep historical truth. Stories can contain truths and falsehoods. Human emotions, including negativity bias, prime us to think in certain ways. This paper retells a series of stories about China's international involvement, including in Angola, Djibouti, Sri Lanka and Venezuela, that challenge the media's spin. It concludes with some suggestions about the relationship between academia and the media and policy worlds, and the need for scholars to speak 'truth' to 'power'.